With the centenary approaching, there’s no better time to visit the sites
where such momentous events took place

When Germany set out to invade France 100 years ago this summer, it had everything pre-planned with typical Teutonic efficiency.

A brisk march through neutral Belgium, brushing aside any token resistance. The French army caught off-guard. German jackboots on the Champs-Elysées, France on her knees and the laurel-crowned victors home before the autumn leaves fell. But the Kaiser’s planners made a small miscalculation: Belgium.

When, on August 2, 1914, the German high command imperiously demanded safe passage for its armies, Albert I, King of the Belgians, issued his famous rebuke: “Belgium is a nation, not a road.”

On August 4, 800,000 German troops began to pour across the border and Britain entered the war in Belgium’s defence, thanks to the 1839 Treaty of London (which, to be frank, the Germans rather hoped we’d forgotten about).

The inexperienced Belgian army was massively outnumbered and seemed ill-equipped to offer serious resistance. But Belgium was fully aware of her reputation as “the battlefield of Europe” (Waterloo, for example, had been fought just south of Brussels barely a century before) and had prepared a warm welcome for any would-be invader.

'Gallant little Belgium' bought vital time for her French and British allies Strategic cities such as Liège and Namur were ringed with fortresses, their heavy guns encased in thick concrete, and the Germans knew they must neutralise these before advancing into France. So the war on the Western Front began amid the gentle hills, tranquil waterways and medieval towns of Wallonia in southern Belgium.

Liège was the first to feel the might of the German steamroller but, to the invaders’ intense chagrin, it proved a much tougher nut than their timetable had allowed for. Although the city’s dozen forts fell one by one, they held up the German advance by almost a fortnight, rather than the two days allowed for in the German plans.

The largest fort, Loncin, might have resisted longer had the Germans not brought in their secret weapon – “Big Bertha”, an enormous 16.5in howitzer that could hurl shells weighing three-quarters of a ton from well outside the range of the defenders’ guns. When one of Bertha’s monsters pierced Loncin’s main explosive store, the blast ripped the fort apart, killing 350 of the 500 defenders. Many are there still, entombed where they fell.

Liège finally capitulated on August 16 and Brussels did so on August 20. Namur was next. This Baroque city, majestically straddling the confluence of the Sambre and Meuse rivers amid the hills and forests of the Ardennes, was seen by the German generals as the gateway to Paris. They entered it on August 23, but again only after strong defence from the encircling forts.

An Anglo-Belgian War Memorial in Place Poelaert, Brussels

Belgian resistance had all but collapsed. But “gallant little Belgium”, as the British press soon christened her, had bought vital time for her French and British allies. Although the Germans penetrated to within 50 miles of Paris, they never took it and France never fell.

By now British troops had been deployed in Wallonia and on August 21 they saw action for the first time when two scouts on bicycles spotted some German cavalry across a canal in Obourg, near the pretty medieval city of Mons.

One pedalled back to raise the alarm while his comrade, Pte John Parr, stayed behind to cover him. Outgunned and overwhelmed, Parr had the sad honour of becoming the first British casualty of the First World War. He was 16 years old, so keen to enlist that he had lied about his age.

Next day, at Casteau, just north of Obourg, a troop of the 4th Dragoon Guards charged a detachment of German lancers and their captain, Charles Hornby, is believed to have been the first British soldier in the war to draw blood – on horseback, with a sabre. One of his men, Edward Thomas, then fired the first British shot on the Continent since Waterloo. Both men survived the war.

On August 23 the British fought their first full-scale battle of the conflict at Mons. Militarily it was not a success and, by nightfall, the heavily outnumbered British were obliged to retire. But it became a kind of First World War Dunkirk, one of those “glorious defeats” that can boost morale as much as victory.

Two badly wounded machine-gunners, Lieut Maurice Dease and Pte Sidney Godley, covered their comrades’ retreat with such selfless valour that they won the first two Victoria Crosses of the war – posthumously in the case of Dease.

Inter-Allied monument of Corinthian helmets at Liège

And it was later reported that during the night, soldiers on both sides had seen strange lights in the sky, including angels with bows and arrows protecting the British rearguard. These “Angels of Mons” were a gift to the Allied propaganda machine – which may, indeed, have invented them, since eyewitness accounts seem only to have surfaced well after the legend was established.

By autumn 1914, Wallonia, like northern Belgium, was almost entirely in German hands (France, by contrast, lost only her northern rim). The trenches of the Western Front sliced through the extreme west of Wallonia around Comines- Warneton, where Lt Col Winston Churchill MP served for several months between 1915 and 1916.

Here during Christmas 1914 occurred one of the strangest events of the war, the unofficial Christmas Truce, when soldiers on both sides crawled from their dugouts to meet in no man’s land and chat, swap cigarettes and even play football. The truce was documented by first-hand witness, cartoonist Bruce Bairnsfather, the creator of Old Bill.

Belgium resigned herself to occupation but did not give up the fight. Thousands of ordinary Belgians – as well as foreigners such as British nurse Edith Cavell – quietly risked their lives to assist Allied prisoners and monitor German troop movements. Thousands more escaped to join the free Belgian army, doggedly defending its small remaining corner of Flanders. And finally, in 1918, Allied troops received a tired but rapturous welcome as they fought their way back to Mons, Liège, Namur, Brussels and the mist-shrouded vales of the Ardennes.

COMMEMORATIONS

Belgium probably suffered more per capita in the First World War than any other nation in western Europe and will enjoy a special place in this year’s centenary commemorations.

On August 4, the centenary of Britain’s declaration of war, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge will attend a service of remembrance hosted by the government of Belgium in Liège, before travelling to a commemorative event at Saint Symphorien Military Cemetery near Mons, where John Parr and Maurice Dease are both buried.

These will be the only cities outside the UK included in official British commemorations marking the outbreak of the war.

Nothing quite matches the experience of seeing where such momentous events took place There will be many other events throughout Brussels and southern Belgium, from tours and exhibitions to concerts and re-enactments, making this a particularly rewarding time to explore the region. It is well worth a visit at any time, thanks to its mixture of historic towns, handsome scenery and a joyful culture of fine food and drink.

Numerous new museums and attractions are opening to mark the centenary, not to mention the bicentenary of Waterloo next year and the 70th anniversary of the Liberation during the Second World War. One of the most impressive is the Plugstreet 14-18 Experience at Comines-Warneton, which brings to life the experiences of both soldiers and civilians during the hostilities.

You could even make a day trip. Belgium was already the railway hub of Europe in 1914 and today just two hours separate the British and Belgian capitals. There are many air routes from all over the UK and sea ferry links provide the chance to take your own vehicle.

Nothing quite matches the experience of seeing where such momentous events took place. Outside Liège is what looks like a grass-grown jumble of boulders, scattered across a hillside by some departing glacier. Except that it’s not. The boulders are shattered lumps of concrete, the remains of Fort Loncin and epic testimony to the terrifying power of Big Bertha.

In the Place Saint-Jean in Brussels, the statue of a proud young woman carries the legend “Vive le Roi! Vive la Belgique!” – the last words of the resistance fighter Gabrielle Petit as she was shot by firing squad for daring to stand up to her country’s conquerors.

Many towns and villages – Namur, Dinant, Visé, Andenne, Sambreville, Tamines, Porcheresse – contain dignified memorials to the hideously undignified atrocities perpetrated on Belgian civilians by German soldiers. Most moving of all are the many cemeteries – not Rupert Brooke’s “corner of a foreign field” but acre upon acre of plain white crosses and slabs, each one a testament to a personal tragedy. Most are immaculate, still tended with respect and gratitude after almost 100 years. At the German cemeteries, the car parks are full of German number plates.

By a strange quirk of fate, the grave opposite John Parr’s at Mons’s Saint-Symphorien cemetery is occupied by Pte George Ellison, a 40-year-old from Yorkshire. Ellison must have thought himself a lucky man. Saved by the “Angels” at Mons in 1914 he also survived fierce fighting at Ypres, Lens, Loos and Cambrai. But back in Mons after the Liberation, his luck ran out just an hour and a half before the Armistice on November 11, 1918, when he was killed on a routine patrol, the last British serviceman to perish in the war.

All that separates Pte Parr and Pte Ellison is a few yards of turf. A few yards – four years – and almost a million lives.